I just returned from teaching the Papervision3D workshop in Sweden; it was an awesome group and good fun! For all those who attended : Thank you very much for the good and fun workshop, you where an awesome group! Also many thanks for Johan and Marcus from the local usergroup for helping out with the event!

This week Saturday I’ll be heading off to Chicago to be part of the FITC Chicago event. I’m looking forward to doing my Flash 2D & 3D effects session as well as a 1 day workshop on Papervision3D. If you haven’t registered yet, make sure you do so as there are still some tickets left, but they are going fast!

Register here for the RMI Papervision3D 2.0 workshop Chicago.

Sorry for the silence on this blog lately, personal matters take priority and as such it will be more quiet here over the coming months. But expect a nice blog on some exiting news here tomorrow. Looking forward to see any of you attending FITC Chicago.

And then some more exiting news; FITC Seoul is happening and I am lucky enough to be invited to come over and speak amongst these great names ; Joshua Davis, Erik Natzke, Kyle Cooper, Richard Galvan, Marcos Weskamp, and Euna Seoul. With such an awesome line up, I’m sure this will surely be a success and a opportunity for us to reach out to the korean / asian community! Looking forward to see any of you there!

The Adobe User Group Netherlands has organized a bustrip from the Netherlands to belgium…yes, an oldschool bustrip ! The FREE Multimania event will be held on the 23rd of this month, and will feature speakers like Aral Balkan, Mario Klingemann, Jason Levine, Serge Jespers, Dave Schroeder and incidentally, I, Ralph Hauwert will be speaking there too.As such I’m looking forward to hopefully see you at my session and/or have a beer and a chat afterwards! It promises to be a lot of fun; for those of you in the Netherlands, wanting to join the organized trip, here’s the invite from the Adobe Usergroup Netherlands (dutch, sorry) :

Ga mee met AUG naar MultiMania 2008!
De Adobe User Group Nederland organiseert een reis naar MultiMania, dat vrijdag 23 meivoor de 8e achtereenvolgende keer in Kortrijk, Belgie plaatsvindt. MultiMania is het grootste gratis multimedia event van Europa, en met maar liefst 30 internationale sprekers en presentaties op het gebied van design, development, audio, video, 3D en game development is er voor iedereen wat wils. Aan het einde van de dag is er een exclusief feest, gesponsord door Boulevart. Ga mee met de AUG in de touringcar naar MultiMania!

Sprekers op de conferentie zijn onder andere Group94, Rob Chiu, Aral Balkan, Mario Klingemann, Jason Levine, Sander Lipmann, Ralph Hauwert, Serge Jespers, Capt. Luke en nog veel meer. Kijk hier voor het volledige programma.

Er is door de AUG een touringcar geregeld die vanuit Amsterdam, via Utrecht en Breda naar Kortrijk in Belgie rijdt. In de avond wordt iedereen door dezelfde bus weer netjes naar Nederland gebracht. Geen gezeur met gemiste treinen, vertragingen of ‘de bob zijn’ maar met vakidioten en studenten een gezellig uitje met de Adobe User Group! De kosten van deze bustrip bedragen 39,50 euro en als je student bent betaal je maar 24,50 euro. Om jezelf aan te melden voor deze trip, ga je naar de inschrijvings pagina. Hopelijk tot ziens op de 23e!

Intro

As promised in my previous post, here’s a small opensource project from my side. It’s tiny, really, but I hadn’t seen an ActionScript implementation of any form of Image dithering before.

Dithering….what ?

Just a brief explanation what dithering in this context means. From wikipedia :

“Dither is an intentionally applied form of noise, used to randomize quantization error, thereby preventing large-scale patterns such as contouring that are more objectionable than uncorrelated noise.”

Words to take note of in that sentence are quantization, and “intentionally applied form of noise”. In our case quantization is the removal or swapping of colors. The form of noise applied differs over the several implementations and in so called “ordered dithering” it’s hardly noise, rather a carefully chosen threshold matrix.

Dithering, why ?

Dithering imagery has been around for some time. Put a close eye to any black and white printed newspaper’s pictures and you’ll see the effect.

It’s basically been around a lot longer then I have in my 28 years of life…that’s for sure. I first learned terms like “ordered dithering” and “Floyd-Steinberg Error Diffusion” in my young and early days on the Amiga hardware. See, in those days computer hardware wasn’t capable of displaying the huge arrays of colours like now-a-days. Since you then had few colours to spare (a typical amiga workbench ran at 16 to 128 colours or so), you needed to be creative to get yourself a nicely pimped desktop image, whilst still sparing colours for your icons.

A better example of a dithering implementation for our industry is probably that checkbox when you want to save for web in Photoshop, using GIF. Or when you print something on a pure black and white printer.

Conclusion; dithering is normally used to create the illusion of tones on a device which is otherwise not capable of displaying it. So why port this to our ARGB/32Bit enabled Flash Player ? Part of the reason why I worked on this is because I just like the aesthetic of the effect. It just brings back wonderful memories of pimping my Amiga desktop.

Dithering in AS3

So, the algorithms for dithering are really quite simple. I was playing around with hydra Pixel Bender and had some ideas on converting some old algorithms to have them run in realtime. Then I thought I could make this run in realtime on Flash 9. So, first I did a version of the Algo in pure AS3. I played around with converting it to something fast enough to run at at least 20 frames per second on an average machine…and painfully failed. The remains are the AS3 version (hydra Pixel Bender version still in progress)….and I decided to clean that up a bit, and have it released as an OS project for anyone to use.

Currently it only contains so-called error-diffusion based ditherers. They make the most sense anyway, since the ordered ditherers really have nasty visual sideeffects, like Bayer’s crosshatches. Check the variants out in this little demo application using the class.

The Demo : try and use “No Dithering” first to see the effects of regular palette conversion.

The Source

Usage :

ImageDithering.dither(bitmapData, type, levels, grayscale);

Where :

BitmapData is the image to be manipulated.

Type is the form of dithering, currently supported :

1. ImageDitheringType.FLOYD_STEINBERG
2. ImageDitheringType.FALSE_FLOYD_STEINBERG
3. ImageDitheringType.STUCK
4. ImageDitheringType.NO_DITHER

Levels is the amount of colour levels to quantize to per channel.

Grayscale is a boolean indicating whether to convert the image to grayscale before the process is ran.

Right click and viewsource on the example to see how it’s implemented in Flex.

Quick update : Mario Klingemann, working on Aviary’s Peacock did a quick test with it. My effort had some use anyway!

“Pixel Bender” ? Really ?

[Fill in my excuse for not posting in such a long time]. There’s so much to tell, hence the weird title. Let’s start of with todays news; Adobe renames Hydra to Pixel Bender. They actually did it….now…it might be me…but wasn’t Hydra a way cooler name then “Pixel Bender” ? At least we’ll be able to make Bender references all the time now…adding to nerd-status. The cool thing ? Bender’s brain is a MOS6502 … the same cpu which for instance, also powered the best machine of all times.

Puppet Interview

So, moving on from that news. Over the last months I’ve done several interviews. I was reluctant to post them, but come to think of it, why ? You are reading this page so you’re at least interested in what I have to say. The best interview as of yet was with Gideon, one of the worlds best designers. In all honesty, “jet-lagged” as I was, I wasn’t at my best, so these interviews might entertain you more; Joshua Davis, Hugh Elliot, Moock&Gmunk, Seb-Lee Delisle.

FITC & rePhlex and Flash Player 10

Of course, all of this was recorded at the FITC Toronto 2008 conference. First off all, thanks to the FITC Organisation…you guys did an awesome job. The conference had an excellent vibe … (except for that annoying drunk dude at the front door on Tuesday…you know who you are), and I had a great time hanging with you all. I did a sold-out workshop on day 1, day 2 a panel, with Adobe’s Justin, Richard, Lee, Joa from Hobnox and Mr. Paperworld: Trevor.

On day 3 I did my session…I was shocked to find the room literally packed with people….and was somewhat nervous throughout some moments in my session, but as it seems by the feedback, people really enjoyed it. The reviews I found in my incoming links are at least very positive.During this session I also got to talk about rePhlex again, my new toy project. rePhlex is meant to be a lightweight, realtime image processing and syncing/eventing library for site/example and demo purposes. It’s been overgoing some heavy changes and refactoring…you’ll all just have to wait a bit more.

Another thing I really enjoyed doing in my session was that I was allowed to show some hydra Pixel Bender running inside Flash Player 10. Yes….you missed a sneak of Flash Player 10’s awesome power.

On day 4 of the conference I had a taped conversation with Keith Peters, which, next to the obligatory joke he made at my cost, to get back at me for sleeping a bit to long, we both hoped won’t bore you too much…you put to actionscript / math / graphic nerds on a couch…what do you think happens ?

I saw some sessions myself, but was really unlucky with my taste vs the schedule. Things I can quickly remember seeing; Seb-Lee Delisle, Mario Klingemann, Keith Peters, Robert Hodgin, Erik Natzke and many others. Robert’s session (the last of the conference) absolutely blew me away. And I do love Radiohead!

So, that would wrap up FITC Toronto (and Amsterdam too).

Upcoming Conferences

I’m looking forward to speak at this months Multimania. In June there’s going to be FITC Chicago…later on this year many more, amongst which for instance; Singularity 08. I’m really unlucky to have to miss out on this years FlashBelt…..hope you all have a good time there anyway.

Goodbye Earthmine ! Hello new works ?

As some of you, attending one of my sessions or workshops earlier this year might know, most of my commercially available time went to the Earthmine project. That work ended for me last week and after working on one project for such an extended period of time (7 months+) and some rest, I’m now really looking forward too and open for new jobs and work..I’m not sure what I’ll do yet and am still contemplating on what I really want to do as the “next” thing. In the mean time I’ll be working on smaller freelance jobs. And if you have something you’d like me to work on….ping me.

Playing with Hydra and image algorithms

Another post coming up today will explain some more. With my work on rePhlex and Hydra, I’m having a blast doing image manipulation algorithms….one of my experiments was image dithering and half-toning…with as a result a new open source project. More on that in my next post…which will appear on the all new and revamped AXNA / Adobe Feeds! Welcome back !

Yes! April is coming up quickly and that means amongst others 1 awesome event, FITC Toronto. I’m excited to be speaking at this event alongside other speakers like GMUNK, Joa Ebert, Andre Michelle, Erik Natzke, Patrick Matte, Ivan Todorov, James Paterson, Grant Skinner, Joshua Davis, Thijs Thiemstra, Keith Peters, Evan Roth, Niko Stumpo, Mario Klingemann and many more!

I’m really looking forward to do my 3D and 2D effects session and hope to see you there!
Also, I will be giving a one day workshop on Papervision3D, in front of the event; as one of the dev’s of the API I can assure this is will be one day of great fun, knowledge and learnings! Make sure you register in time, these things tend to sell out fast.

FITC was kind enought to pass me a special 10% discount code for the event in Toronto; using the code unitzeroone you will be given that discount.

You’re not sure yet ? Well, check out these videos on FITC Amsterdam and be convinced!

You always have projects lying around that are to be finished…but probably never have the time for…

Today Exey Panteleev posted some creative use of Papervision3D and the Shaders in 2.0. Accompanying to his post he asked if it would be possible to run water simulation with Papervision3D….

Actually, yes…
Water Ball Experiment 1 Water Ball 2(cpu burner alert!)

As one of those things I never finished and probably don’t have time to finish within the next month or so, I have two examples of Papervision3D running interactive water on top of a sphere.

Disclaimer : these things are hacked together experiments from a couple of months ago…as a result performance isn’t to good. I’m sure that given some time they can run smooth, without burning your cpu to the ground. Hope you enjoy anyway

A nice addition to the Papervision3D code base. With the latest repository version of Papervision3D 2.0 / GreatWhite, it is possible to cut any TriangleMesh into half. Here’s how :

var meshes:Array = MeshUtil.cutTriangleMesh(triangleMesh, cuttingPlane);

Where the cutting plane is a Plane3D and the triangle mesh is any object with it’s own triangle geometry, including for instance ASE, DAE, MD2 or Collada, but also all primitives.

Here’s an example source for download : Mesh Cutting sources

On another, related note not too long ago it was announced that Mono now runs on the iphone (check a video here). Mono This could open the door to Moonlight running on the iPhone….let’s hope Adobe and Apple can make Flash on iPhone officially….then all those rejected iPhone developers might run to Flash development…..yes…I know..it’s not the same…

This demo / source file is one which was used during the Papervision3D Workshop in Amsterdam, during the fantastic FITC Amsterdam 2008 event. These are the modified final sources for the example I did at the end of the day. Although quite simple, I think they are very useful at illustrating on how to use shaders. Download the sources here.

Yesterday Adobe announced a Security update on Flash Player 9. So, time to go back to your sources and check. As you might have noticed I wasn’t the biggest fan of the tighter security in the FP 9.0.115 update; it broke the RTMP streaming hack, breaking the ability to get bitmapdata’s from FLV streams. The word hack indicates the official status of that method, so Adobe wasn’t really to blame here. So far for the 115 update…but, as it turns out, that was just half of the story.

The upcoming April 2008 Security Update release will tighten security a bit more, and you need to check if it won’t break your running instances…here’s what you should beware of…

You use sockets or XMLSockets, regardless of the domain to which you are connecting

What’s been changed ? Quote :
“This security update will make the optional socket policy file changes introduced in Flash Player 9,0,115,0 mandatory.”
Ok, so everyone who’s using sockets….really, really needs to check.

You use addRequestHeader or URLRequest.requestHeaders in any network API call when sending or loading data cross-domain or You provide access to content on remote domains as a web service provider.

Ok, that’s alot of us too Apparently, it currently is possible to send malicious headers to vulnerable domains….I’d say it would be up to the recieving end to fix their security…but ok.

You have SWFs that are exported for Flash Player 7 (SWF7) or earlier that communicate with the hosting HTML by any means

Ok, that’s quite a few SWF’s that I made in the far past….I’m not sure if I even still have the full code to all of them….might be an issue for some of us, actually. Quote :

“The change in default behavior may impact content that uses fscommand() and/or getURL("javascript:...") ……”

Indicating that the default setting for AllowDomain has changed and that fsCommand and javascript call security is tightened. The new default setting for AllowDomain is “SameDomain”.

You use “javascript:” through network APIs to communicate outside a SWF

A nice little quote again :

“If your content is using “javascript:” within the prohibited networking APIs, you will need to rewrite your content. Developers are encouraged to use the ExternalInterface class for JavaScript-to-ActionScript communication.”

So, getUrl and navigateToUrl will still be working, but if you where using for instance Loader.load(), you need to rewrite your code. Yes…that’s right…rewrite… Now, you should’ve been using ExternalInterface, but this is hardly encouraging…it’s called being forced…no problem for me, but if you actually did this somewhere, clear out some time to rewrite that portion of script.

The update is coming, so make sure you update your code…..I’m pretty sure that John Dowdell, Emmy Huang and Justin Everett-Church are good indicators to listen too when they are telling you to go and check this. I wonder if this is the reason why Emmy Huang is going on a long vacation…. (enjoy your vacation Emmy).

In any case, it’s good to see Adobe so concerned with the security risks implied with maintaining the nr1. webbrowser plugin. But, on a side note, with for instance the content security (not being able to load imagery from other domains without the policy files), I’m still not decided on how I feel about that. If it’s possible from within other runtime vm’s like java and javascript…why not in Flash ?

Also, I’m still hoping Adobe will concider activating the keyboard when in Fullscreen…this would really be great for gaming and advanced RIA interactivity (shortcuts and such).

Also, what will be the version no for this update ? I take it it won’t be 115….right ?

Ok, so I wanted to post this one earlier; an extremely realistic looking 3D interactive portrait of a girl….it’s kind of weird looking and a bit spooky, don’t look at her too long It’s impressive though.

So, what is this ? Well, a bit of simple research (read, firebug) led me too motionportrait.com. Unfortunately, that’s in japanese. That site has the same girl on it, as well as links to several other implementations of the technology…including this hilarious one : hige-chen (love that tune). But also, to the still very cool Rec-You campaign. I’m betting we’ll see a couple of more implementations of this in the near future.

Another thing that caught my attention today was a mail from the creator of the isometric engine ffilmation. Very nice work indeed! The name is derived from the old-skool filmation engine, used to create various gaming titles for the old 8-bit platforms. Looking forward to see progress on it. Related : also, make sure you check out the Alternativa3D engine which was previously isometric only also, but now “full 3D”..impressive stuff.

A bit late, but I didn’t see any MXNA post on this; the first beta for Gnash is out. From the release post : “Gnash is a GPL’d SWF movie player and browser plugin for Firefox, Mozilla, and Konqueror. Gnash supports many SWF v7 features and ActionScript 2 classes.“.

Gnash already made the news last year, but this time they’ve got a beta…

Honestly, I’m not really impressed. One of the goals for this release seems to be to make youtube work on it. I don’t think this means that good to the Flash community. Even if Gnash grows up (and eventually supports SWF9 / AS3), I don’t really like the idea of “another” player. In my opinion, if it becomes a broader supported version of the player, it will just cause rips in the ubiquity and cross-platform nature of Flash….something which is undeniably one of the biggest strenghts of the platform.

What Gnash might provide is a deeper insight of the workings of the Flash Player, which might eventually enable us to optimize our code for it more and more. It might also inspire Adobe to make the Flash Player available on more os’es ? Let’s hope so. Maybe someone will port it to the Iphone

Over the last months I spent alot of my time developing with and on Papervision3D. Most notably alot of the new features of Papervision3D 2.0 have been part of daily work and development. Now I have yet to see someone uncover all of the posibilities with the current alpha, next to people as mr.doob and zeropointnine (and many more, yes).

It’s incredibly inspiring to me to see that the goals and purposes I personally had intended with the Papervision3D 2.0 source code is being picked up this well. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still alot to do…but in essence it seems to work for people ! I guess seeing your work being put to use by others in ways you wouldn’t or would’ve expected is a big part of the pay-off in OpenSource development. It’s both educational and inspirational to see how people are using the architecture.

(As a side note…in the FITC Amsterdam video on Lee Brimelow’s blog I’m noted as aformentioned zeropointnine…which is wrong….obviously, I’m that other three word number like dude….UnitZeroOne…Lee….)

Anyway, I stumbled upon note.x when I got my traffic report. It’s all in Japanese but I’m really astounded by the quality of code and work. It’s a very nice blog indeed, go and check it out.

Some other very good resources on pv3d 2.0 include : pv3d.org, papervision2.com, actionscript architect and of course fellow team member Andy Zupko.

Everything broke on my blog today. It was time to finally move over to WordPress. I didn’t really have time at all tonight, but I decided to have a go at it anyway. I think it was a great move also thanks to Derek Punsalan’s great theme, which only needed some minor modding for widgets and style.

Now, a bigger post on FITC Amsterdam 2008 and rePhlex (a new, soon to be OpenSourced AS3 Library I have been working on) will follow soon! (above screenshot comes directly from rePhlex).

And if I didn’t include your link in my blog roll, but you are sure I should have, contact me…I didn’t do it on purpose.